1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of metering and metering communication systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tracking and controlling energy consumption is a global concern. Utility providers, such as power, gas, and water, meter how much a particular customer uses over a period of time. Traditionally, the utility provider would have to physically send a person to the customer's location to read the meter to make this determination. This is costly, time consuming, and did not occur on a continual basis. This method of monitoring can also lead to a customer tampering with the utility providers' metering devices so as to create the appearance of not using as much of the utility as was actually used.
In order to deal with these some of these pitfalls automatic meter reading (AMR) was developed. AMR is a technique of reading a meter remotely. One way of accomplishing this is to have the meter generate a short range radio signal to be read by the utility provider. This signal will simply give the utility provider the number of kilowatt hours (kWh), gallons of water, etc. used by the consumer over a set period of time. However, the utility provider must still send out a person to be close enough to receive that signal. The meter may or may not provide for a tampering notification.
Metering devices have also traditionally used expensive application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or digital signal processors (DSPs) to perform the needed calculations on incoming data.